Wild Violet Featured Works: Week of Sep. 2 (Labor Day)
Labor Day, the American celebration of workers, also signifies the beginning of the transition from summer to fall. This week’s contributors celebrate the two meanings of the holiday. Jane Bowman Smith’s poem, “Wrightsville Beach: Observation Lesson,” shows us a writer’s distant view of the world. Mahnaz Badihian’s poem, “Gathas,” takes a lyrical look at the turn of the seasons. In Melodie Corrigall’s “Olé,” a sick office worker goes toreador on her...
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The moment her head broke the surface of the blissful water of consciousness, Mandy knew there would be no bullfights today. Her aching bones are crushed under her faded quilt and her head sizzles like a hot air balloon impaled in a blazing Spanish sky. “Get up, Mandy. I’m not phoning in again,” her husband, Bruce, says. Again? For him, she phones, and pleads, kisses ass, and irons shirts but when, once a year, she pleads from her deathbed for a favor, all she gets is a whine. “What if I were unconscious or impaled by a bull?” “You’re not unconscious; you have...
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Recycled Woman arrives along with all the seasons Arrives with freshness and the beauty of spring Arrives with the old, yellow leaves in autumn Arrives in the season of ice and freezing rain She’s present everywhere Along the dirt roads Along the plains In the forgotten houses Between the lines of Gathas* Across the fire temples In the temples, mosques, churches With frozen dreams Recycled Woman knows that life is like The morning dew sitting on the green leaves So brief, so fragile She learned that everywhere far or near In the troubled roads of Harlem Next to the green beauty of...
Read MoreWrightsville Beach: Observation Lesson
I start with those great lines about the rose: “but where save in the poem shall it go to suffer no diminution of its splendor?” Well, that’s one way to look at it. Today’s painful thought — I write rather than live. Words on the page, my...
Read MoreWild Violet Featured Works: Week of Aug. 26 (Music)
Brad Henderson’s poem, “The Snare Drum is My Genesis, Part 1,” shows the interweaving of life and music for a drummer. In Caroline Taylor’s story, “One of Ours,” an opera singer on her last vocal tour of London has an experience she never could have predicted. Joanna M. Weston’s poem, “The Musician,” translates the experience of hearing music into a vivid metaphor. In Katharine VanDewark’s poem, “Get Your Hands,” an piano concert turns surreal with something the pianist says. A preview article by...
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April 27, 2009 Known in Poland as “King Kristian the Glorious” the white haired pianist said, after almost reaching the end of his program, something not quite audible. Was it “keep your hands off my country” or “get your hands”? A murmur went through the audience flummoxed by the indistinctness of his words. Either phrase opened a roomful of possibilities. Did I want new ones, or would I keep those already attached to my wrists? “Get your hands”: I could use new ones, I thought. Others with the same idea had left their seats and walked down to the...
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